Consumer and Family Affairs

The Office of Consumer and Family Affairs
The Office of Consumer and Family Affairs is a touchstone for all of the age bureaus to give a voice to family members and consumers. Being that voice, staff listen in detail to concerns of consumers and family members, so that we can all work together to improve the services provided by our system. Interdisciplinary teams should include consumers and family members in treatment of mental health conditions in order to achieve holistic outcomes and stability. We value partnerships and believe that together we can promote recovery, resilience and wellness, holding hope for improvements every day.

The Vision of Consumers and Family Affairs is to promote the partnership among consumers, family members and treatment teams so that each can offer their valuable expertise toward the treatment of mental illness. While treatment teams have facts of the impact of mental illness, the family often has an understanding of how the mental illness impacts their loved one, and the consumer is the one living with the effects of the condition. If we join together, we more readily decrease effects of stigma and work toward common goals, rather than any one having all the answers. Together we can collaborate against the weight of mental illness on the community.

Our Mission includes supporting recovery principles, mentorship models, resiliency strategies, community education, relationship building and system problem solving across the mental health field. We work directly with established family and consumer networks in Los Angeles County and also connect to the larger national organizations of peers and families. We provide programs that support education, conferences and meetings on mental health concerns as well as sponsor trainings which promote hope, resiliency, recovery and wellness. Some of our projects include contracts on a large scale and individual consumer and family concerns that come to us daily. We have a regular staff of clinicians that offer support to family members and consumers on quality improvement for their individual cases and we analyze the themes we hear from these individual calls to promote improvements in the delivery system.

While we do not investigate complaints like the Office of Patient Rights (213-738-4888 or 800-700-9996), we do use a solution focused model to find the avenue that best suites the consumer, family and treatment team for the challenges that arise from mental illness.

Please contact our office for additional information on how we can assist you.

Conversation, Information, Education, Inspiration

We are all in this together!

Office of Consumer and Family Affairs
Department of Mental Health
Los Angeles County